AVID program at Inter-Lakes enters third year, shows its efficacy

When Inter-Lakes High School Principal Pat Kennelly was an undergraduate student at Clark University, in Worcester, Mass., she was so inspired by the prospect of education that she announced to her advisor that she was thinking about graduate school.

Her advisor's response: "Well, you could get your Master's degree here, or you could apply to Harvard."

"In a million years I never would have thought that," said Kennelly. She said she was "not an extraordinary student" in high school, and had no inkling that she could be good enough for Harvard. She applied, got in, and the rest is history.

That's the type of effect — pushing a student outside of what was thought to be possible — is what the AVID program, now in its third year at the school, aims to to.

AVID, an acronym that stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination, is a not-for-profit organization that has developed a program to prepare middle-performing students for a four-year college. In 2005, Inter-Lakes received a $20,000 federal Title 2A grant to send teachers for training in the program, and the program was started in in the 2006/2007 school year. It existed for the first two years as an elective class, but this year AVID exists as an after-school program, one where, three days each week, students can "drop in" to the hour-long sessions, where they receive practice on writing essays, taking SAT tests, persuasive speaking and organizational skills. Wednesdays are "tutorial days," when students who are members of the National Honor Society meet with other students to help with problem subjects.

For tenth graders Megan Swingle and Katy Curnyn, the program has worked. They started attending the AVID classes last year, when their parents suggested to them that they could be taking more difficult classes. Last year, the two students took a total of zero honors classes. This year, they're taking all the honors classes they can.

"I was taking it easy," said Swingle. She was getting good grades in the regular-level courses, but had no motivation to push herself beyond her comfort level.

Curnyn was in the same mode. "I didn't want to take honors English because I didn't want to read over the summer... I didn't know if I could do it." She added, "AVID made me feel that next year I could take the harder classes."

That pair of students is in the minority because they attend the program every day they can. Mark Parsons, one of the high school's teachers who supervises the after-school sessions, said there are between five and ten students who will drop in on any given day. So far this year, 25 different students have visited the program. Part of the the benefit of the program, as Parsons sees it, is "having someone to look over your shoulder," and help students through a tough spot in their work.

Nancy Stetson is another one of the teachers involved in the program. She said they start each day with a question from a real SAT test, and the students collectively solve it. Not only does this exercise and build their reasoning skills, it gives students confidence that they could handle the SATs.

Kennelly said that while the after-school AVID program aims to shake the complacency out of the minds of some middle-performing students, the program's lessons have been expanded into the rest of the school. She hopes the result is a change of the school's culture.

"High schools have been doing business in a very similar way for a very long time," she said. "When you look at New Hampshire state standards [for grade-level learning], when you look at textbooks, they're a mile long and an inch deep." She said this means that students in the non-honors level classes graze through subjects, learning basic facts and concepts but often missing out on the deep thinking or "higher-level questioning" that gets closer to the core of the knowledge. "The prevailing pressure is to cover content."

In addition to the four teachers who supervise the AVID after-school program, the school has an AVID site team that seeks to inject greater rigor and aspiration into every classroom. As an example, Director of Guidance Chris Gribben takes every eighth grader on a field trip to Plymouth State University. Kennelly said, "The entire ninth grade class comes to high school with college as a memory, not a concept."

The AVID program has achieved great results, with students like Swingle and Curnyn illustrating a common result: students who engage in the program are likely to take not just one, but several honors classes when they weren't taking any before.

AVID's results are the more impressive since its only costs are stipends for the teachers who supervise the program and transportation costs for field trips. All in all, it costs the district about the same as an after-school club. Maybe they should call it the "change your future" club.